


District Drabbles

by just_a_dram



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-08 18:38:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/764711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_a_dram/pseuds/just_a_dram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Everlark drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter is an ASOIAF/Game of Thrones crossover.

Katniss stubs the toe of her boot in the dirt, scowling at the curly haired southron boy before her. Peeta looks like he wouldn’t know what end of a sword to use if his life depended on it.

She looks down at the wilting yellow flower he’s handed her and scowls. “What are you, some fancy lord?”

All embroidered doublets, pink cheeks, and impeccable manners. Even his eyes were the color of fine silks.

He grins back at her, folding his arms over his chest, undaunted by her taunt. “You’re the one that wanted to speak with me alone, Katniss.” Only to tell him to take his lord father and go home, she’d like to protest, but he doesn’t give her a chance. “So, what are your plans for me?”

Katniss wants to say that her lord father will cut his tongue out for such insolence, but her father is dead, and that’s why this southroner who knew her mother when she was young, before she’d married and moved north, has come north and brought his sweet smelling sons with them—to woo her mother. They might do better to stay home, as her mother hasn’t left her bed since her husband’s death was pronounced by their too fat maester. Nothing will change that.

But she doesn’t need her mother and she has learned to do without her lord father. She’ll cut Peeta’s tongue out herself. Or find some other useful task for it.


	2. Medieval Jewry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Medieval AU

Gale glares at us from across the street, watching our exchange with too much interest. He’s not the only one.

I am Jewess; Peeta a Christian. I dress in black and bear the badge and Peeta Mellark wears red, as if it isn’t a terrible licentious sin to do so. He wears a crown of blond curls too that look soft to the touch.

“The law forbids it,” I sternly lecture Peeta, as I stare down at the sweet milk bread he has baked and brought me as a gift. A gift to accompany his proposal.

“Bread?” he teases.

“Marriage.”

My parents broke Peeta’s god’s law and my sister has curls as blond as his beneath her dark kerchief. It was a small, personal act of rebellion for which we all pay. Jews and Christians alike won’t do business with us.

I wouldn’t go hungry as Peeta’s bride, but it would be wrong to say yes for a full belly.

I scowl at his slow grin.

“One day, Katniss.”

Maybe. I just need a better reason.


	3. A Speeding Ticket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> au fic tumblr prompt fill

The pavement gives off waves of heat, as Katniss climbs from her patrol car, electronic pad in hand. She’s on traffic duty and this is the third person she’s stopped for speeding in the last hour. Climbing in and out of her car shouldn’t be a workout, but in this heat she’s already sweat through her polyester uniform.

Two feet from his window, the man in the black Volvo rolls it down, and she’s not really paying attention behind her mirrored sunglasses, when he interrupts her rehearsed questioning. Are you aware of just how fast you were going?

"Katniss Everdeen!"

Her eyes flick up from her pad.

"This is a surprise," he continues, smiling broader than any man should when he’s about to be stuck with a speeding ticket, but then, the Mellarks always were rich and careless. "Peeta Mellark."

"I remember."

She suddenly remembers a lot about her classmate. It comes back to her in a rush that isn’t quite nostalgia, because she hated high school and he was the kind of guy that probably loved it.

She hates that he can probably see the sweat circles at her neck, and she cranes her head to the side in a futile attempt to escape the cling of the hot fabric.

"Would have never thought you would turn out to be a cop."

"Police officer," she corrects.

"Right. You were always so anti authority. Hanging out with… what was his name, Gale?"

Katniss hums, looking back down at her pad. Why didn’t she take a closer look at the information his license plate pulled up? She should have noticed the name and better prepared herself for this. “Somehow I was still accepted at the academy, despite my delinquent past, I guess.”

Did Peeta really think smoking cigarettes behind the bleachers meant she was a bad kid? And how did he even know she hung out with Gale?

"I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just not what I imagined you’d be doing. Maybe something with music. You were so talented."

She blinks behind her glasses. “Everybody’s got to eat.”

He reaches for something in his console, and Katniss wrongly assumes it’s his proof of insurance until he hands the brightly colored card through the window to her. “Well, if it’s about being hungry, you can always stop by my bakery. We don’t have doughnuts, but there’s probably something you’d like.”

"Ha ha," she replies, pinching the card between her fingers. "Doughnut jokes. Original."

The address reads District 13. Only one district away. She didn’t know he lived so close by. Someone like Peeta should have gotten the hell out of Dodge. Particularly with an awful family like his. He always seemed different from them. Nice even.

"Sorry," he says with a shrug, his palms drumming against the steering wheel. "But really. It’d be nice to catch up, while you’re not writing me a ticket."

Katniss stiffens. “I have to write you up.”

"Yeah, that’s fine. Do your thing. Just promise you’ll drop by some time."

Katniss looks at the card and back at his smiling face with those crazy long lashes catching the sunlight.

"I’ll ice a cookie with your name on it."

That’s when she remembers the only Valentine she ever received—a heart shaped cookie, iced in pink with her name written across it. Left every year on her desk without any clue as to who gave it.

"Say you’ll come?"

"Yeah. Maybe."


	4. Bar Fights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> everlark, tumblr prompt fill

“Hey, fellow District 12 alum,” a deep voice says, violating an unposted rule of the ER waiting room–silence. Only this idiot and the baby two seats over have no respect for it.

We’re a long way from District 12, but even hearing my high school’s name throw out here in a Panem hospital, I don’t immediately look up. I like to be left alone, and ignoring people usually helps keep me that way. But whoever it is, he’s persistent, nudging the steel toe of me work boot with a highly polished dress shoe. “Fancy seeing you here,”

I reluctantly lift my head up from contemplating my hand. I’ve been holding it aching in my lap for the last hour, growing ever more familiar with each scar and fresh scrape. Damn triage assessments, because there’s no way this isn’t serious. Good drugs serious.

The lighting is shitty–buzzing florescents–but it’s impossible not to mistake him. The blond boy with crazy long lashes, who sat in front of me for half my high school career, smiles down at me.

“Jesus Christ,” I whisper.

“Nope. Peeta,” Peeta Mellark says, squinting at me through a rapidly swelling eye.

I roll my eyes. Something he can’t presently do. Can’t wink either, though he tries. Apparently, the nicest boy in our class got his clock cleaned. And that should lessen my shame at sitting here, looking like I crawled out of a mine shaft, but it doesn’t.

I pull my boots in under me, away from his nice shoes.

“Can I?” he asks, pointing at the chair I’ve draped my dad’s jacket over, precisely so no one sits there, but I can’t say no to him, so I snatch away his jacket and scowl back down at my hand.

“How are ya?” he asks, as he slumps into the plastic chair that groans under the weight of him.

“Terrible,” I say, tilting my banged up hand his way.

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, well, you look terrible.”

“Thanks, Katniss,” he says, turning on that megawatt smile of his the girls all twittered over. “I got in a fight.”

“No kidding.”

“With a guy you know, actually. Cato?”

The name doesn’t immediately ring a bell, but I nod, hoping that will put an end to the conversation and we can sit awkwardly side by side until the nurse calls one of our names.

I am curious though, because he’s dressed awfully nice for a bar brawl. Dress shoes, pressed slacks, dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Do people get in fights at nice weddings? Because that’s where it looks like he came from.

“How’d you mess your hand up?” he asks, leaning slightly towards me.

I lean away, regaining the space and I lift my good hand to my mouth. I bite at a loose piece of skin at the nail, while he watches me, seemingly undisturbed or at worst mildly curious about the spray of blood across my t-shirt.

No one touches my sister when she doesn’t want to be touched. I started protecting her years ago, and I’m not going to stop now just because she’s twenty-two.

“Why do you want to know?” I demand, dropping my hand. “We never even talked in high school.”

That’s kind of a lie. We talked the once, but hopefully he has the good grace not to mention one of the more humiliating episodes in my young life. Peeta played savior to me and my family by giving me the money for rent that month, when we were going to be evicted. He saw me sitting outside the school counselor’s office fighting off tears, and for some reason, I confessed everything to him, while he sat listening to me in his varsity wrestling jacket. My family don’t know who to thank for that random act of kindness. My mom never even asked.

Peeta crosses his arms over his chest and sinks deeper into the chair. “That’s because I was chicken.”

I cock a brow at him. “No one was afraid of me.”

“Are you kidding? Lots of people were afraid of you,” he says with a laugh and then winces at the wrinkling of his swollen face.

“You better stop talking.”

“I’ll be better tomorrow,” he says with a shrug.

“Sure you will.” He must be counting on a magic salve from the hospital doctors, because that’s what it’s going to take. There’s no way he’s going to recover from that shiner overnight.

“If not tomorrow, then Monday, and by the time I see you again on Friday, I’ll be sporting an ugly green bruise.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, I should have mentioned. I’m not chicken anymore.”


	5. A Crate of Lemons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> post-war, domestic fluff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for jynersoander as a part of my donation drive to fight Nazis.

“Capitol delivery arrived,” Peeta calls.

The screen door slam that announced my presence sets my teeth on edge. I’ve got to fix that.

“Katniss?”

Dropping my game bag at my feet, I bend to pull off my boots. “Be there in a second,” I say with a grunt. The left boot doesn’t want to come off.

The kitchen smells bright with citrus, when I walk in barefoot to find Peeta at the counter, shirtsleeves rolled up. He announces the source–“There were lemons in the crate”–as soon as I round the corner.

“What are you making?” I ask, pushing up on the counter, assuming my familiar perch.

As much as I enjoy the solitude and quiet of hunting, after sitting still for the whole of the morning, it feels good to let my feet swing. My back hunches and sink my weight into my hands.

“Lemon vanilla roll-out cookies.”

“Iced?”

He looks up from his task, bright eyed at the prospect of a hard to source ingredient. “Royal icing.”

I tilt my head and my braid flips in front of me.

“Glossy,” he clarifies. “Good for decorating.”

“Sounds fancy.”

“You’ll like it,” he says, pausing in rolling out the dough to rub his chin against his bicep.

The warmth of the vanilla fills the room as he works the dough. He’s pretty skilled at getting as many cookies as possible out it, but if there are scraps left, I’ve shown up in time to eat them raw. Saliva floods my mouth and I press my lips together.

Prim admired the pastel iced cookies and cakes that graced the Mellark Bakery window, but I’m as happy with a daily serving of peasant bread as I am his finer creations. The drawback with elaborate designs is they take awhile, and my belly has been growling for an hour. It’s why I picked my way back through the underbrush with only a rabbit from my snares.

“How long s’it gonna take?” I ask, watching the tendons in his arms pull taut with his movements.

The dusting of flour on his arms highlights his blond hair, causing it to stand out, as he rolls the pin forward. I assumed rolling pins were standard. Even in our Capitol stocked kitchen, we only had a basic one. Peeta has three. This one that doesn’t have handles and is heavy and thick; another that’s tapered at the ends and slender; and a marble one that would make a solid arena weapon. Maybe he has more. I don’t go digging through the kitchen drawers. He bakes for me. Cooks for me. Takes care of me. I can allow that now. I can help him too.

“You want to get a good long look at the baker?” he asks, reaching for the star shaped cutter at his side.

I roll my eyes with a kick of my heel against the cabinet below. It thuds dully in the gap left behind by my embarrassment.

“I’m hungry.”

It’s the truth, but it sounds like a lie. I say it in that flat, awkward way of mine, too consumed with finding somewhere else to look.

“S’okay. I don’t mind. You watching,” he says in that low, toe curling way of his.

I want to tell him to shut up, but I don’t trust my voice.

“Grab the butter. You can help me grease the sheets.” He nods his head at the baking sheets stacked by the sink without checking to see my scowl. “It’ll get you a cookie faster.”

I could protest—I’m a disaster in the bakery, when Peeta needs an extra hand—but I can grease a sheet and Peeta’s gratitude, which used to make me feel hopelessly inadequate, is as welcome as his cookies melting on my tongue.

“If they burn… ”

“They never burn.”

“I won’t take responsibility,” I say, sliding off the counter.

“I liked those crispy cookies you made last week,” he says, snagging me around the waist with his right arm.

He pulls me in. Pressed together, the inhalation of his broad chest makes my heart skip. I feel like I can barely get my quiet protest out, “Those cookies were terrible.”

“Yes they were,” he agrees, as he tips his head down to press his lips to mine in a hello, a welcome home, better than any verbal greeting.

And for a moment, when his nose nudges mine and he brushes his lips against mine again, soft and slow, I’m tempted to give in to a different hunger. But there are lemons and royal icing and plenty of time for kisses.

“I’ve got a rabbit. Good sized,” I say, tipping my head down, as my thumb grazes his chest over his heart.

“I’ll make a lemon gravy.”


End file.
